I found it hard to imagine any sort of vessel being able to negotiate the mountains without foundering or coming to some impossible obstacle. If that had happened Jacob would have had to proceed on foot and it seemed all too likely that a lone, elderly man travelling across mountainous terrain would fall victim to accident or illness. Even a slight fall would have doomed him if he had torn a ligament, broken a bone or ripped his safesuit.

It ought to have saddened me to think that the old man’s final quest, begun with such hope, might have ended soon after he set out, but I was too numb from the emotions I had endured the night before to feel anything. I did wonder if Atthis had told Maruman where Cassandra’s key lay. It would be just like the contrary feline to know and not tell me such vital information. On the other hand, she might simply have given the old cat a route to follow that would bring me to the place where I would find Jacob’s bones.

I looked around, suddenly wondering if Jacob had even reached the mountains. The thought that Cassandra’s key and Jacob’s body might be close by woke a flicker of interest in me, but it was like a spark falling onto damp wood. If I was right, let Maruman bid me search. Certainly he was the leader of our small party of expeditioners, for all Darga’s claim that he had been sent to guide me.

‘It is time to go on,’ Maruman sent so dreamily that I turned and gave him a sharp, uneasy look, wondering if he had been listening to my thoughts.

‘Go where?’ I asked, before I could stop myself.

‘Into the mountains,’ he sent.

As it transpired, Maruman meant exactly what he said. Once I had mounted up and he was perched on the pack at my back, Gahltha set off east, following the stream along the foot of the mountains. Knowing we could not go much further in that direction, I was on the verge of demanding to be told where we were going, when I noticed that the stream had vanished. I supposed we had reached the place where it emerged from the mountains, and sure enough, when we came closer, I saw that the stream was flowing along a narrow ravine just wide enough to admit a horse and a rider. It cut into the mountain at such a sharp angle that if I stepped back only a few paces the opening would have seemed no more than a long slightly shadowed fault in the cliff. Like Uttecove on Norseland, you had to be almost upon it before you could see it.